On July 23, 2018, my local Duluth, Minnesota TV news teams reported the following short bit of information that they had received from Essentia Health’s media relations folks. Essentia admitted that their clinic’s varicella (live chickenpox virus) vaccines and ProQuad inoculations (= MMR [live measles, mumps, rubella viruses plus varicella]) had been injected into a number of pediatric patients over an unspecified period of time. Essentia had discovered that the inocula had been stored at an “improper temperature”. The parents of the patients had been urged by a separate letter to return for a repeat shot of the live virus vaccine.

I checked Essentia’s website and found no clarification of the brief bit of information that had been reported on TV, so I decided, in the interest of providing the information that patients are supposed to be given before giving their consent to being injected with a potentially hazardous group of substances, I went online to get it for them through this column. After doing my research, I obtained the following information, some of which I will comment upon below.

DULUTH, Minn. – Pediatric patients who received two types of vaccines at the Essentia Health-Duluth Clinic may need to return for a second round due to improperly stored doses.

According to a letter sent out to parents, the vaccines at the clinic were not stored at the manufacturer’s recommended temperature.

Essentia is recommending that patients who received a dose of Varicella or Proquad return to the clinic to receive a second dose so they can ensure the children are fully protected against illnesses.

Essentia says they are unaware how many children, if any, received a dose of the less-than-optimal vaccines.

Proquad vaccinations protect children against measles, mumps and rubella while Varicella is a vaccine that protects against chickenpox.

The hospital says they have put measures in place so this type of incident does not occur again and that no children have experience any ill effects from the earlier vaccine.

[Ed note: the ingredients in the chickenpox virus portion of each vaccine need to be stored at freezing temperatures until immediately before the inoculation or else it must be discarded as useless. Merck has provided no information as to why or if administering a thawed vaccine is either useless of dangerous. See immediately below for information on the (surprising) ingredients in the two shots (2), the (potentially serious and frequent) adverse effects of the shots (3) the (unaffordable) costs of the two shots (4)] and the recent sudden deaths of two infants in Samoa who died within minutes of being inoculated with their routine MMR shots (which are widely advertised as being “safe and generally well-tolerated” (5).

1) MRC is Medical Research Council 5, human diploid cells (containing two sets of chromosomes) that were derived from the normal lung tissues of a 14-week-old male fetus aborted for “psychiatric reasons” in 1966 in the United Kingdom,

2) Bovine serum is the centrifuged fluid component of either clotted or defibrinated whole blood. Bovine serum comes from blood taken from domestic cattle. Serum from other animals is also collected and processed but bovine serum is processed in the greatest volume.”

“Bovine serum is a by-product of the meat industry. Bovine blood may be taken at the time of slaughter, from adult cattle, calves, very young calves or (when cows that are slaughtered are subsequently found to be pregnant) from bovine fetuses. It is also obtained from what are called ‘donor’ animals, which give blood more than once.

3) Fetal bovine serum is blood taken from bovine fetuses only because some female animals that are slaughtered for meat for human consumption are found (often unexpectedly) to be pregnant.

4) Comparative costs of a single shot of ProQuad, Varivax, MMR and Gardasil-9

According to the CDC, a shot of Merck’s ProQuad costs $202.41; a shot of Merck’s Varivax costs $122.02 and a shot of Merck’s MMR costs $70.92. (And, incidentally, a single shot of the likely to be useless for cancer prevention (HPV) human papillomavirus vaccine, Merck’s Gardasil-9, which was initially marketed for the prevention of cancer of the cervix 20 – 30 years hence!) costs $204.87. These fees do not include the costs of an office call or any possible administration fee!!

The Samoan Government has seized the MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) vaccine from around the country and launched an investigation following the deaths of two babies last Friday.

The first baby, a 1-year-old girl, died within three minutes of being injected by the vaccine by a nurse at Safotu Hospital in Savaii.

Two hours later, another family brought their baby, a 1-year-old boy, to the hospital for his vaccination.

According to TV1 Samoa, when the family heard about the first death they refused to let their son be vaccinated but allegedly the nurse did it without the parents’ consent.

He died within a minute of being injected.

The Ministry of Health CEO Dr Take Naseri has ordered the immediate withdrawal of the vaccine and all hospital staff involved have been stood down.

Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi has sent his condolences to the families and says he has called for a full inquiry into this “devastating incident”.

“There are already processes that will determine if negligence is a factor – and if so, rest assured, those processes will be implemented to the letter to ensure that such a tragedy will not be repeated and those responsible will be made to answer,” he said.

Note:The MMR vaccine is recommended for all children in New Zealand, and the Ministry of Health says it has an “excellent safety record”.

An inquest next week in Samoa will further investigate the cause of death of two babies who died minutes after receiving the MMR vaccine at Safotu district hospital, the police say.

Photo: 123RF

Police said samples from the post mortem of the two infants had been sent overseas for further medical analysis.

Meanwhile, the Samoa Medical Association has expressed grave concern about the deaths.

The association’s president, Tanyamarie Petaia, said she believed health care providers in Samoa had an astronomical task ahead in regaining people’s confidence in the safety of the health service.

The continuation of the expanded immunisation programme was of particular concern, Dr Petaia said.

The association joined all Samoan health care professionals and providers in expressing sincere apologies for inadvertently causing pain and sadness to the families of the two deceased infants, she said.

7) Samoa Halts MMR Vaccine Program Following Death of Babies

Samoan government officials have launched an investigation into the deaths of two one-year-old infants. The babies were brought to Safotu Hospital in Savai’i and given “routine” MMR vaccines. They died within minutes of receiving it.

(The) Samoan Prime Minister expressed condolences following the news. He also stated “I have called a full inquiry into the circumstances leading up to this devastating incident which I do not

HONG KONG–Chinese Premier Li Keqiang called for a government investigation into “the entire process chain of all vaccine production and sales,” after a drug company allegedly sold more than 250,000 doses that failed to meet safety standards.

Shares of major local vaccine makers, including a Merck & Co. partner, tumbled Monday after Mr. Li’s statement was released a day earlier. He didn’t elaborate on what more his government would do to investigate.

Mr. Li’s investigation was sparked by public outrage against Changsheng Biotechnology Co., a large vaccine maker based in Jilin, a province in Northeast China. Earlier this month, the national drug regulator said Changsheng fabricated production records of a rabies vaccine. The company said it suspended production of the vaccine, pending the results of an investigation. It said none of the batches in question were shipped.

Then a week ago, Changsheng said a separate investigation conducted by Jilin’s food and drug authority showed that 253,338 doses of another vaccine–administered to protect against diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus–failed to meet safety standards. Most of the doses, the company said, were sold to the government of Shandong province. Authorities in Jilin province fined it $380,610 and seized $126,683 worth of assets from sales of the vaccine, the company said.

Authorities in Beijing have recently tried to clean up the world’s second-largest drug market by sales, after a series of safety scandals–involving drug ingredients, milk and infant formula–led to deaths and angered the public. The latest incident touched a nerve.

Anger on Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat and Twitter-like microblogging site Weibo Corp. was largely directed at Beijing’s inability to restore public faith in domestic goods. That deals a blow to President Xi Jinping’s government, which is seeking to transform the drug industry into a producer of complex products.

There were eight times more searches and mentions of the term vaccine on Sunday compared with a day earlier, according to WeChat Index, an app for big data analysis. Searches and mentions involving the company, Changsheng, were 50 times higher over the same period.

Mr. Li sought to soothe worries about safety as anger intensified over the weekend. “We will resolutely crack down on all illegal and criminal acts that endanger the safety of people’s lives, and resolutely punish those who violate the law,” his office said Sunday. It added that Beijing was committed to ensuring “a safe, secure and trustworthy living environment” for its citizens.

Shenzhen-listed Changsheng was halted from trading after falling by more than 40% since last Monday.

China’s drug regulator is overhauling regulation and cracking down on fraudulent research in a bid to clean up the pharmaceutical industry. In 2015, it allowed companies to voluntarily withdraw new drug applications, while warnings about harsher penalties for applicants whose research failed to meet its standards. By mid-2016, more than 80% of the 1,429 pending applications had been withdrawn.

“No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable…for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death.” – President Ronald Reagan, as he signed The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986, absolving drug companies from all medico-legal liability when children die or are disabled from vaccine injuries, thus reversing many of the intentions of the original legislation that founded the FDA

“The human immune system is divided into two major classes: 1) Cellular Immunity (for which injected vaccines do absolutely nothing, except to weaken it), located in the mucous membranes of the gastrointestinal and respiratory tracts and their respective lymph nodes and 2) Humoral Immunity, with production of antigen-specific antibodies by plasma cells in the bone marrow. For eons of time the mucous membranes of the gastrointestinal and respiratory tracts have been the primary sites of infectious microbe entry into the body so that, of necessity, mucosal/cellular immunity has evolved as the primary defense system, with humoral immunity serving a secondary or backup role…Vaccines are reversing these roles, attempting to substitute vaccine-induced humoral immunity for the far more efficient mucosal immunity, the latter in turn undergoing a process of “atrophy of disuse” as a result of this role-switching.” — Harold Buttram, MD

“The soaring incidence of physical and mental illnesses among today’s children (may be) causally related to current childhood vaccine programs. Primary among these is the large-scale contamination of the measles, mumps, and influenza vaccines with retroviruses capable of engrafting their genetics into the DNA of childhood recipients. This is rendered more likely because of the cavalier disregard with which combinations of viral vaccines are now being administered, primarily involving the MMR vaccines…in spite of the toxicology principle that combinations of toxins may bring exponential (10-fold or 100-fold) increases in toxicity.” – Harold Buttram, MD

“Completely unvaccinated children have less chronic disease and a lower risk of autism than vaccinated children.” — J. B. Handley, Jr. – Founder of Generation Rescue

“…our current results are consistent with the existing evidence on the toxicology and pharmacokinetics of aluminum adjuvants which altogether strongly implicate these compounds as contributors to the rising prevalence of neurobehavioral disorders in children. Given that autism has devastating consequences in the life of a child, and that currently in the developed world over 1% of children suffer from some form of ASD, it would seem wise to make efforts towards reducing infant exposure to aluminum from vaccines.“— C A Shaw, PhD

“There is a serious problem with vaccine safety. Vaccine aluminum adjuvant has adverse neurological effects at dosages that are recommended by the US CDC. Vaccine critics are supported by the science. Parents refusing to vaccinate according to the recommended CDC schedule are supported by the science. Use aluminum-containing vaccines with great caution, or not at all.” – Chris Shaw, PhD http://vaccinepapers.org/category/aluminum/

“Aluminum is an experimentally demonstrated neurotoxin and the most commonly used vaccine adjuvant…research clearly shows that aluminum adjuvants have a potential to induce serious immunological disorders in humans. In particular, aluminum in adjuvant form carries a risk for autoimmunity, long-term brain inflammation andassociated neurological complications and may thus have profound and widespread adverse health consequences.” — (From Tomljenovic and Shaw’s journal article “Aluminum Vaccine Adjuvants: Are They Safe?”, published in Curr Med Chem. 2011;18(17):2630-7.)

“In the field of chemical toxicology it is universally recognized that combinations of toxins may bring exponential increases of toxicity; ie, a combination of two chemicals may bring a 10-fold increase in toxicity, three chemicals 100-fold increases. This same principle almost certainly applies to the immunosuppressive effects of viral vaccines when administered in combination, as with the MMR vaccine, among which the measles vaccine is (known to be) exceptionally immunosuppressive.” – Harold Buttram,MD

“The steadily increasing patterns of physical and/or mental illnesses among American children show no signs of abating. Unless this issue is definitively addressed, at some future time the process will pass a point of no return (socially and economically) from the sheer numbers of incapacitated children.” – Harold Buttram, MD

“…the NIH (National Institutes of Health) is incapable of conducting conflict-free research. …it is clear that the system managing our vaccine program is corrupt beyond repair and needs a complete overhaul.” – Lori Mellwain, National Autism Association board chair

“It is difficult to get a man to understandsomething, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” – Upton Sinclair, anti-fascist, anti-imperialist American author who wrote in the first half of the 20th century. Sinclair’s 1903 novel “Jungle” (about the repulsive slaughterhouse practices in the meat-packing industry in Chicago) led to President Theodore Roosevelt’s pushing through the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.

“…even the ideal influenza vaccine, matched perfectly to circulating strains of wild influenza and capable of stopping all influenza viruses, can only deal with a small part of the ‘flu’ problem because most ‘flu’ appears to have nothing to do with influenza. Every year, hundreds of thousands of respiratory specimens are tested across the US. Of those tested, on average 16% are found to be influenza positive.’” – Dr Peter Doshi (from a British Medical Journal review article, “Influenza: marketing vaccines by marketing disease” 2013 (BMJ 2013; 346:f3037)

“It’s no wonder so many people feel that ‘flu shots’ don’t work: for most flus, they can’t, work because most diagnosed cases of the flu aren’t the flu.” – Jon Rappoport. Investigative reporter

“[According to CDC statistics], ‘influenza and pneumonia’ took 62,034 lives in 2001—61,777 of which were attributable to pneumonia and 257 to flu, and in only 18 cases was the flu virus positively identified.” – Dr Peter Doshi, from in his 2005 BMJ report, titled, “Are US flu death figures more PR than science?” (BMJ 2005; 331:1412)

“The CDC says that 36,000 people die from the flu every year in the US. But actually, it’s closer to 20. However, we can’t admit that, because if we did, we’d be exposing a gigantic psyop. The whole campaign to scare people into getting a flu shot would have about the same effect as warning people to carry iron umbrellas, in case toasters fall out of upper-story windows.” – Jon Rappoport

“The evidence for indicting immunisations for SIDS is compelling. However, the keepers of the keys to medical-research funds are not interested in searching this very important lead to the cause of an on-going, and possibly preventable, tragedy. Anything that implies that immunisations are not the greatest medical advance in the history of public health is ignored or ridiculed. Can you imagine the economic and political import of discovering that immunisations are killing thousands of babies?” — Dr William C. Douglass, MD (Honored twice as America’s ‘Doctor of the Year’)

“Sudden Infant Death Syndrome has been reported following the administration of DPT. The significance is unclear. 85% of SIDS cases occur in the period 1 through 6 months of age, with the peak incidence at age 2 to 4 months.” (From the accompanying insert to Connaught Labs DPT vaccine)— Jane Orient, MD, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons

“Official data shows that large scale vaccination has failed to obtain any significant improvement of the diseases against which they were supposed to provide protection” — Dr Sabin, developer of Polio vaccine

“It is pathetic and ludicrous to say we ever vanquished smallpox with vaccines, when only 10% of the population was ever vaccinated.” — Dr Glen Dettman

“The decline in infectious diseases in developed countries had nothing to do with vaccinations, but with the decline in poverty and hunger.” — Gerhard Buchwald, MD

“I was working in one of the oldest lung illness treatment centres in Germany, and just by chance, I looked at the files of those people who had fallen ill during the first German epidemic of smallpox (in 1947)…We had always been told that the smallpox vaccinations would protect against smallpox. And now I could verify, thanks to the files and papers, that all of those who had fallen ill had been vaccinated. This was very upsetting for me.” — Gerhard Buchwald, MD